Free Bill 4 - on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure by Harry Harrison

perfectly harmless.”
    Later, after their burns were treated and the roasted Archimedes, who had fired his last guanic salvo, was served up in sandwiches as a thank you to the white-robed medics who had treated them, Rick allowed that he had forgotten you were supposed to turn up the air conditioning a tad when landing in the Holy Pillar of Starship Cleaning Flame. Bill took it all in stride. Cleaning up parrot bowb wasn't too bad, but Archimedes' constant stream of knock-knock jokes was beginning to set his teeth on edge. It was a pleasure to realize that he would never have to listen again to the like of “Knock-knock,” “Who's there?,” “Toby,” “Toby who?” “Toby or not Toby.”
    And he was really looking forward to a nice cold beer!
    The Holy Bar and Grill was the biggest drinking saloon Bill had ever seen. After they checked into their room at the overpriced and undercleaned Hiltom Hotel, they walked past banks upon banks upon banks of slot machines, blackjack tables and Galactic lottery booths. Bill was stunned. The bar in the main building stretched for over two miles and there were clouds obscuring the far end. It was lined with an army of cloned android bartenders, all of whom looked equally repulsive, with pig's heads — which had a tendency to drool down their tusks — and twelve-fingered hands which were great for carrying a lot of glasses at once.
    The lines of taps served every beer in the known universe, from Old Peculier from a planet called England to Really Old and a Lot More Peculier from Ireland, along with Happy Barrel Dredgings from New South Whales. Lines of all manner of bottled spirits strung out like colorful baubles on a giant prostrate Christmas tree stretching for kilometers and kilometers. Bill was alternately assailed by whiff's and fumes of blissful brews, scintillating spirits. Oh, heady hops! Oh, mischievous malts, ah! the blissful joys of alcohol! He had the sudden thought that maybe in this place even the bar-rags probably tasted good, but resisted the sudden impulse to find out.
    In mundane matters like women and the Troopers, Bill was simply a knee jerk, reflex kind of guy with any traces of conscience or original thought eroded away by years of military indoctrination. But in matters of drinking, he often waxed philosophical since this, and creative cursing, were the only areas of originality the Troopers had left open to him. Why, some pundit had asked recently, when there are numerous varieties of mood and mind-altering drugs available these days, naturally from exotic worlds, or synthetically from legal or illegal laboratories, why is the favored drug amongst the military, and perhaps even the human universe alcohol in all its insidious forms?
    To this question, Bill had three relevant responses:
    1. Alcohol gets you drunk.
    2. Alcohol then gets you even drunker.
    3. Alcohol then gets you unconscious, which is the only escape from the military a Lifer would ever get.
    But, continued the pundit's challenge, why alcohol when there are so many other inebriating drugs that were less addictive, that did not cause eventual gross tissue damage in the internal organs, that did not have such a history, of human degradation, suffering and shame permanently affixed to all their various and sundry forms?
    Bill might have pointed out that perhaps there was a natural need in a human being to get blotto from time to time; but he was only aware of this instinctually and could not articulate the thought or the urge. He might have sung the praises for the panorama of taste available in the wide range of alcoholic drinkables, but since most of his favorite drinks tasted awful and since by the third or fourth drink he didn't taste anything anyway, he didn't.
    As it happened, one day in the misty past in a low bar on Boozeworld, a Trooper R & R center, Bill was enthusiastically sitting, enjoying a couple dozen drinks and heading quickly for alcoholic extinction while ogling the multiple